Monday, February 21, 2011

The Main Cage

The blinking red light of doom on my Blackberry cut through the darkened room like a lighthouse. I peeled myself out of bed and trepidatiously checked it. It was from WonderWife™: Call me when you wake up re: your debit card.

These are not the words one wants to read upon first waking up when you’re on a guys’ weekend in Vegas.

I called my wife, who had spent the better part of the morning besieged with calls from the bank. My account had been frozen. She was given a run down of the problem—there were a few withdrawals made in Las Vegas, but the correct pin number was used.

“My husband is in Vegas right now, so I’m sure everything’s okay,” she told the bank rep. “You can unfreeze the account.”

“But there’s some suspicious activity on the account,” the bank rep replied. “An attempt was made to go over the limit and usually customers know the daily limit on the account. The transaction in question was from a machine called ‘the main cage.’”

“That was in a casino!” I interjected as WW™ told me the story.

“Sure it was,” she said slyly.

The bank rep told WW™ the amount I was trying to take out. I imagine her jaw hit the floor.

“Um, you better keep that freeze on the account,” she told him. “I don’t know what the hell is going on out there.”

As she was telling me this, I had already figured out the problem.

“Last night Sam left his ATM card at the hotel, so instead of him having to fight traffic all the way back up the Strip, I was attempting to float him a loan,” I explained.